Four Eventful Days at Capernaum

145:2.1The next Sab­bath, at the af­ter­noon ser­vice in the syn­a­gogue, Je­sus preached his ser­mon on “The Will of the Fa­ther in Heaven.” In the morn­ing Si­mon Pe­ter had preached on “The King­dom.” At the Thurs­day evening meet­ing of the syn­a­gogue An­drew had taught, his sub­ject be­ing “The New Way.” At this par­tic­u­lar time more peo­ple be­lieved in Je­sus in Ca­per­naum than in any other one city on earth.

145:2.2As Je­sus taught in the syn­a­gogue this Sab­bath af­ter­noon, ac­cord­ing to cus­tom he took the first text from the law, read­ing from the Book of Ex­o­dus: “And you shall serve the Lord, your God, and he shall bless your bread and your wa­ter, and all sick­ness shall be taken away from you.” He chose the sec­ond text from the Proph­ets, read­ing from Isa­iah: “Arise and shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Dark­ness may cover the earth and gross dark­ness the peo­ple, but the spirit of the Lord shall arise upon you, and the di­vine glory shall be seen with you. Even the gen­tiles shall come to this light, and many great minds shall sur­ren­der to the bright­ness of this light.”

145:2.3This ser­mon was an ef­fort on Je­sus’ part to make clear the fact that re­li­gion is a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. Among other things, the Mas­ter said:

145:2.4“You well know that, while a kind­hearted fa­ther loves his fam­ily as a whole, he so re­gards them as a group be­cause of his strong af­fec­tion for each in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of that fam­ily. No longer must you ap­proach the Fa­ther in heaven as a child of Is­rael but as a child of God. As a group, you are in­deed the chil­dren of Is­rael, but as in­di­vid­u­als, each one of you is a child of God. I have come, not to re­veal the Fa­ther to the chil­dren of Is­rael, but rather to bring this knowl­edge of God and the rev­e­la­tion of his love and mercy to the in­di­vid­ual be­liever as a gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. The proph­ets have all taught you that Yah­weh cares for his peo­ple, that God loves Is­rael. But I have come among you to pro­claim a greater truth, one which many of the later proph­ets also grasped, that God loves you—ev­ery one of you—as in­di­vid­u­als. All these gen­er­a­tions have you had a na­tional or racial re­li­gion; now have I come to give you a per­sonal re­li­gion.

145:2.5“But even this is not a new idea. Many of the spir­i­tu­ally minded among you have known this truth, inas­much as some of the proph­ets have so in­structed you. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where the Prophet Jeremiah says: ‘In those days they shall no more say, the fa­thers have eaten sour grapes and the chil­dren’s teeth are set on edge. Ev­ery man shall die for his own in­iq­uity; ev­ery man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. Be­hold, the days shall come when I will make a new covenant with my peo­ple, not ac­cord­ing to the covenant which I made with their fa­thers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, but ac­cord­ing to the new way. I will even write my law in their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my peo­ple. In that day they shall not say, one man to his neigh­bor, do you know the Lord? Nay! For they shall all know me per­son­ally, from the least to the great­est.’

145:2.6“Have you not read these promises? Do you not be­lieve the Scrip­tures? Do you not un­der­stand that the prophet’s words are ful­filled in what you be­hold this very day? And did not Jeremiah ex­hort you to make re­li­gion an af­fair of the heart, to re­late your­selves to God as in­di­vid­u­als? Did not the prophet tell you that the God of heaven would search your in­di­vid­ual hearts? And were you not warned that the nat­u­ral hu­man heart is de­ceit­ful above all things and of­ten­times des­per­ately wicked?

145:2.7“Have you not read also where Eze­kiel taught even your fa­thers that re­li­gion must be­come a re­al­ity in your in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ences? No more shall you use the proverb which says, ‘The fa­thers have eaten sour grapes and the chil­dren’s teeth are set on edge.’ ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘be­hold all souls are mine; as the soul of the fa­ther, so also the soul of the son. Only the soul that sins shall die.’ And then Eze­kiel fore­saw even this day when he spoke in be­half of God, say­ing: ‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.’

145:2.8“No more should you fear that God will pun­ish a na­tion for the sin of an in­di­vid­ual; nei­ther will the Fa­ther in heaven pun­ish one of his be­liev­ing chil­dren for the sins of a na­tion, al­beit the in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of any fam­ily must of­ten suf­fer the ma­te­rial con­se­quences of fam­ily mis­takes and group trans­gres­sions. Do you not re­al­ize that the hope of a bet­ter na­tion—or a bet­ter world—is bound up in the prog­ress and en­light­en­ment of the in­di­vid­ual?”

145:2.9Then the Mas­ter por­trayed that the Fa­ther in heaven, af­ter man dis­cerns this spir­i­tual free­dom, wills that his chil­dren on earth should be­gin that eter­nal as­cent of the Par­a­dise ca­reer which con­sists in the crea­ture’s con­scious re­sponse to the di­vine urge of the in­dwelling spirit to find the Cre­ator, to know God and to seek to be­come like him.

145:2.10The apos­tles were greatly helped by this ser­mon. All of them re­al­ized more fully that the gospel of the king­dom is a mes­sage di­rected to the in­di­vid­ual, not to the na­tion.

145:2.11Even though the peo­ple of Ca­per­naum were fa­mil­iar with Je­sus’ teach­ing, they were as­ton­ished at his ser­mon on this Sab­bath day. He taught, in­deed, as one hav­ing au­thor­ity and not as the scribes.

145:2.12Just as Je­sus fin­ished speak­ing, a young man in the con­gre­ga­tion who had been much ag­i­tated by his words was seized with a vi­o­lent epilep­tic at­tack and loudly cried out. At the end of the seizure, when re­cov­er­ing con­scious­ness, he spoke in a dreamy state, say­ing: “What have we to do with you, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth? You are the holy one of God; have you come to de­stroy us?” Je­sus bade the peo­ple be quiet and, tak­ing the young man by the hand, said, “Come out of it”—and he was im­me­di­ately awak­ened.

145:2.13This young man was not pos­sessed of an un­clean spirit or de­mon; he was a vic­tim of or­di­nary epilepsy. But he had been taught that his af­flic­tion was due to pos­ses­sion by an evil spirit. He be­lieved this teach­ing and be­haved ac­cord­ingly in all that he thought or said con­cern­ing his ail­ment. The peo­ple all be­lieved that such phe­nom­ena were di­rectly caused by the pres­ence of un­clean spir­its. Ac­cord­ingly they be­lieved that Je­sus had cast a de­mon out of this man. But Je­sus did not at that time cure his epilepsy. Not un­til later on that day, af­ter sun­down, was this man re­ally healed. Long af­ter the day of Pen­te­cost the Apos­tle John, who was the last to write of Je­sus’ do­ings, avoided all ref­er­ence to these so-called acts of “cast­ing out dev­ils,” and this he did in view of the fact that such cases of de­mon pos­ses­sion never oc­curred af­ter Pen­te­cost.

145:2.14As a re­sult of this com­mon­place in­ci­dent the re­port was rapidly spread through Ca­per­naum that Je­sus had cast a de­mon out of a man and mirac­u­lously healed him in the syn­a­gogue at the con­clu­sion of his af­ter­noon ser­mon. The Sab­bath was just the time for the rapid and ef­fec­tive spread­ing of such a startling ru­mor. This re­port was also car­ried to all the smaller set­tle­ments around Ca­per­naum, and many of the peo­ple be­lieved it.

145:2.15The cook­ing and the house­work at the large Zeb­e­dee home, where Je­sus and the twelve made their head­quar­ters, was for the most part done by Si­mon Pe­ter’s wife and her mother. Pe­ter’s home was near that of Zeb­e­dee; and Je­sus and his friends stopped there on the way from the syn­a­gogue be­cause Pe­ter’s wife’s mother had for sev­eral days been sick with chills and fever. Now it chanced that, at about the time Je­sus stood over this sick woman, hold­ing her hand, smooth­ing her brow, and speak­ing words of com­fort and en­cour­age­ment, the fever left her. Je­sus had not yet had time to ex­plain to his apos­tles that no mir­a­cle had been wrought at the syn­a­gogue; and with this in­ci­dent so fresh and vivid in their minds, and re­call­ing the wa­ter and the wine at Cana, they seized upon this co­in­ci­dence as an­other mir­a­cle, and some of them rushed out to spread the news abroad through­out the city.

145:2.16Am­atha, Pe­ter’s mother-in-law, was suf­fer­ing from malar­ial fever. She was not mirac­u­lously healed by Je­sus at this time. Not un­til sev­eral hours later, af­ter sun­down, was her cure ef­fected in con­nec­tion with the ex­traor­di­nary event which oc­curred in the front yard of the Zeb­e­dee home.

145:2.17And these cases are typ­i­cal of the man­ner in which a won­der-seek­ing gen­er­a­tion and a mir­a­cle-minded peo­ple un­fail­ingly seized upon all such co­in­ci­dences as the pre­text for pro­claim­ing that an­other mir­a­cle had been wrought by Je­sus.